


The A(BC)vengers

by Huntress79



Series: The Redemption Of Bucky Barnes [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes & Tony Stark Friendship, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, F/M, Gen, Halloween, M/M, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, POV Bucky Barnes, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 06:11:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21221900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress79/pseuds/Huntress79
Summary: Bucky’s life at the Avengers Tower, over the course of October.





	The A(BC)vengers

**Author's Note:**

> 26 drabbles of each 100 words, written for superhero_land’s “The ABC’s of a Hero” challenge. Part of my “The Redemption of Bucky Barnes” series, set six months after "The New Normal".

*********************

**Amused**

As far as Bucky knows, it never means anything good when you run into Tony Stark and he’s smiling broadly. According to Steve, it’s one of the few things Stark junior has inherited from Howard, and there’s always trouble following this kind of smile. Still, encountering the genius in the Avengers common room with such an expression, he just had to ask. If possible, the smile got even broader when Tony replied: “Take a look at the calendar, Buckaroo. Halloween is around the corner, so to speak! Which means candies, and costumes, and parties, and trick and treating. Gotta go!”

*********************

**Baking**

Bucky really wasn’t that surprised when he entered the kitchen area of their common floor and was immediately taken back to his mother’s kitchen, mostly thanks to the multitude of smells coming from the ovens. What surprised him was that, next to their resident bakers Wanda and Clint, he also found Steve, Nat and Vision helping along (or at least they apparently tried; the amount of floor covering these three sang quite a different tune). But then, it was his turn to surprise them all, especially Steve, when he made several batches of Sarah Rogers’ special Halloween cookies – from scratch.

*********************

**Costume Party**

A costume party was obligatory, just like participating was the same. When Pepper suggested it, she even got a groan from Nick Fury. Steve and Nat tried to reason with her that a bunch of people dressing up regularly for their job weren’t interested in doing that for a party, but in the end, Pepper got her wish, and so, they all were mingling in the common room, dressed as historical characters. Nat and Clint were Lady Marian and Robin Hood, Tony and Pepper transformed into Caesar and Cleopatra, and Bucky and Steve became Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

*********************

**Decorating**

Back in the day, the most elaborated decoration for Halloween was a carved pumpkin, and if Bucky remembered correctly, the families in their street held a competition on who had the most creative one. So when he stepped out of the elevator, coming down from the helipad on the roof after finishing a mission for Fury, and ran straight into a man-sized cardboard scarecrow, he was more than a bit surprised. But then, he remembered Tony’s words a couple of days earlier, and he couldn’t help but wonder what other decorations the genius had put up all around the tower.

*********************

**Eating Candy**

For all the bad things the serum had caused him (and all the good things it did for Steve), there was one major advantage both centennials could agree upon: the ability to eat things in a manner common people wouldn’t be able to stomach at all. And so, by the end of the third October week, Tony, with him the rest of the Avengers, Pepper and Fury, had to take to drastic measures to keep two super soldiers from falling into a sugary hole – mainly by advising everyone to lock up their personal stash of sweets for the time being.

*********************

**French Kiss**

The year before he shipped out to Italy, Bucky learned a “special” game for Halloween from one of his dames back then. Now, he couldn’t either remember her name, nor what she even looked like, but this particular game was somewhat seared so deep into his brain that not even 7 decades of mind wipes could erase it. All you had to do was putting a piece of candy in your mouth, and your partner would start eating it from the other end – until they were giving you a very sweet French Kiss. Bucky loved this game very very much.

*********************

**Gummy Worms**

Of all the candy they had at their disposal now, Bucky found that he leaned slightly towards Gummy Worms. He couldn’t explain it why, but somehow the specific taste of this candy reminded him of his childhood. Not in a way that he could recall any particular event where he might have encountered a past version of this sweet treat, but still enough to make him feel like was wrapped in the old, worn Barnes family plaid, handed down from generation to generation and mended in more places that he could count. He often wondered what had happened to it.

*********************

**Halloween**

Halloween 2019 is, at least in Bucky’s and Steve’s common opinion, a very far cry from the Halloween they used to have in The Great Depression. And that’s not only because back then, people already were struggling to make ends meet in their day-to-day life. It’s also because of the seemingly unlimited variety of candy, the strange and sometimes outrageously priced special drinks for this event – and still, you can win every bet that come October, you’ll see both of them wandering the hallways of Avengers Tower with (at least) one pumpkin-spiced beverage and a bag of candy to share.

*********************

**Iced Tea/Coffee**

Back in the day, iced drinks were only available during the summer months, and every housewife who could afford it somehow had a huge block of ice in her pantry, ready to be chopped into small parts for said drinks. These days, as Bucky learned at his first trip to Starbucks with Clint and Natasha, you can even get an iced tea or coffee when it’s way below zero outside. At first, he thought that some deep psychological trauma would stop him from enjoying such a beverage, but now his favorite is – surprise, surprise – a large Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte.

*********************

**Jigsaw Puzzle**

One of the first things Bucky remembers of his “memory therapy was doing jigsaw puzzles. And while he balked at first at doing such a “childish” thing, by now he can’t help but compare his very own mind to the game. Cause like you should do with a jigsaw puzzle, he started with the framework, with the more recent memories, and worked his way to the center, to his oldest, and most treasured ones. His parents, his sister, the kids living in the same street. Meeting Steve for the first time. Falling in love with him, sharing a first kiss.

*********************

**Kitten**

Despite growing up in a neighbourhood with half a dozen cats, Bucky wouldn’t call himself a “cat person”. Liho, Natasha’s four-legged hellraiser, still can’t be bothered with him at any given day, and on the bad ones, she makes a wide berth around him. So he was quite surprised when by the beginning of October, he gained a “stalker” – in the form of a small white Persian kitten that followed him around whenever he went outside, much to the amusement of pretty much everyone. And no matter what he did, come next morning, the white fluffball was waiting for him.

*********************

**Love**

From what Bucky can remember (and surprisingly, his memories about it are some of the clearest he has these days), he was in love with Steve from the moment they met on the schoolyard at the tender ages of 7 (Steve) and 8 (Bucky). Sure, he didn’t know what love really was at that time, but still, there was a very special feeling starting to grow within him that not even seven decades of mind wipes could erase. And yet, Steve manages to surprise him whenever he turns Bucky around into him and kisses him, regardless of their current location.

*********************

**Market**

Even with the whole city changed beyond recognition over the decades, there’s one thing that Bucky and Steve still can recognize – that New York is one big city of contrasts. And so, while it was quite surprising, the fact that only three blocks to the west of the Tower was a very well-stocked farmer’s market, standing its ground next to all the skyscrapers, brought a bit of familiarity to both of them. Now, you could see them venturing down to the market, only to return to the Tower with enough fresh fruits and other delicacies to feed a whole army.

*********************

**Nervous**

Ever since the begin of October, Bucky could feel that something was up with Steve. It definitely wasn’t anything related to their past (Steve’s birthday was in July, Sarah died in May), but something was bothering his lover to the point that nervous energy radiated off his body in waves. Even Wanda picked them up, but the young Sokovian didn’t say a word when Bucky asked her about it. Of course, the pessimist in him thought the worst, but in the end, it should be the best thing ever happening to Bucky in almost a century – Steve proposing to him.

*********************

**Oath**

Of course, his (not so) little punk had to do said proposal right when their Halloween party was over, with just the Avengers still around. There were still enough people around to make Bucky nervous, but in the end, he just couldn’t do anything else than saying “yes”. And while Steve gave him his proposal gift, a simple necklace with a copy of his old dog tags, in lieu of a more traditional ring, Bucky only could think that of all the oaths he took over his long lifetime so far, this would be the best and most beautiful one.

*********************

**Pumpkin**

A couple of days before October 31, Clint rallied all the guys, including the visiting Guardians and Thor, in the auxiliary kitchen of the largest restaurant in the Tower. Once there, not only their alien friends got big eyes when they saw the huge pile of pumpkins in all sizes waiting for them to be carved. While Bucky, Steve, Tony, Peter, Clint and Bruce almost immediately started away with their designs, the rest of them watched at first. But when Natasha and Pepper came around some time later to get them for dinner, they were greeted with a small army of Jack O’Lanterns.

*********************

**Question & Answers**

Despite the joint efforts of Steve, Tony, Pepper, the Legal Department of Stark Industries, Nick Fury and Maria Hill, Bucky spent the better part of the first six months after showing up in the Tower’s lobby in an interrogation room. Pretty much every agency wanted to know anything from him, but most of the time his lawyers told them that Bucky was continuously subjected to mind wipes, meaning that no judge would be able to accept any of these facts on that ground alone. And so, exactly six months after his “return”, Bucky Barnes was, at last, a free man.

*********************

**Ruined**

Once that topic (and the danger) was off the table, Bucky and Steve wasted next to no time in doing some catch-up in the bedroom. Though their plans were quickly derailed by themselves, since the bed couldn’t withstand the combined power and weight of two super soldier and broke at some point during their first, rather steamy, sex session. When they told Tony the next day about their mishap, he groaned and muttered about them “ruining” him, but the bright, almost teasing smile he gave them belied his annoyance. And now, they had a custom-made, reinforced California King sized one.

*********************

**Sleeping**

For most of his life, Bucky was a light sleeper. Living in close quarters first with his family, then with Steve, brought that along, especially with Steve constantly fighting an illness. Sure, one could argument that being put in cryostasis during missions also counted as sleep, but Bucky just couldn’t agree with that. And for the first few months after coming free of the programming, he kept an unsteady sleep pattern that had everyone worried. But now, with everything around him falling in place, Bucky finally managed to sleep through the night, most of the time snuggled close to Steve.

*********************

**Too Much**

Being a super soldier has some perks. But there’s one thing that always brings different emotions with it. Namely, their enhanced metabolism. Combine that with being raised in a time when food was scarce and hunger a constant companion, and you have two guys that feel guilty when they go for a second or third helping at the table. According to Nat, Steve was exactly the same after coming out of the ice. But even these two have their limits, and so, after yet another pre-Halloween dinner with some dignitaries, both couldn’t help but groan of having had “too much”.

*********************

**Urgent**

Whenever the Avengers went out for a mission, Bucky would relocate to the control room and help Maria Hill monitoring it. Most of them went by smoothly, with only minor hoopla’s and injuries. But once in a while, some henchmen of their current baddie would find a way to sneak up on any of them on the ground, and more than once, Maria was earwitness to Bucky giving an urgent call into the comms – not only for Steve, but also for Natasha, and in one very memorable stance, for Clint, even though the archer was high up on a rooftop.

*********************

**Visiting A Friend**

Sam Wilson was, despite being one of Steve’s “new” best friends, a mystery to Bucky. Sure, he knew a lot about the man, but that was just some facts. He didn’t know what really made the other man tick, and that irked Bucky. Until one day in October, Steve cancelled their morning run, stating that he was accompanying Sam visiting a friend. Bucky followed them – and gained respect for the man with the wingsuit. Cause the “friend” they were visiting turned out to be one of the many white crosses in Arlington, the last resting place of Sam’s partner Riley.

*********************

**Wrist**

After all the heartache Zola’s revelation about Bucky’s involvement in the deaths of Howard and Maria Stark brought on, nobody really expected that Tony and Bucky would ever find some common ground. But they did, and in hindsight, Steve should have seen it coming. Before the war, Bucky dreamed of becoming an engineer, and when he was on the Commandos, he always was near Howard, discussing technical improvements. Now, Bucky would spend some time of the week in Tony’s lab, trying to figure out how to improve his metal arm, especially around the wrist, the only part that caused trouble.

*********************

**Xylophone**

Morgan Stark, the precious, five-year-old “miracle” of Pepper and Tony, was, for the lack of a better word, a constant source of joy and laughter around the Tower. According to Bruce, by the time she started to walk, Tony considered either implanting a GPS chip or “decorate” her with his version of bells and whistles. These days, she was very much into musical instruments, and so, one rainy afternoon Pepper found both Bucky and Steve with Morgan in the common room, all three of them trying to play the xylophone in a manner that could be cautiously labeled as “music”.

*********************

**Yearbook**

When Bucky and Steve were pupils, they actually were lucky if their teachers remembered them after the summer holidays. Though Steve definitely was memorable, if only for being a walking talking trouble magnet. Yearbooks, like they had nowadays, were not heard of. Though, over the course of October, Wanda, Pietro and J.A.R.V.I.S. put their heads together and came up with an idea that even choked Natasha up. Instead of a traditional paper book, the two Sokovians pulled every picture they could get their hands on and put together an electronic scrapbook of “their” Avengers family, including Peggy, Howard and Nick.

*********************

**Zapped**

One of the many, many marvelous things of their new future was, at least according to Bucky, the wealth of TV programs to choose from. And when you live in a tower that is run by a very smart AI with a touch of sass, you usually don’t have to zap through all the stations by yourself. Most of these days, Bucky let J.A.R.V.I.S. decide what he should watch, based on factors like his stress levels and his overall mood. And so, it came that Bucky was watching an animal documentation one day and an action blockbuster the next day. 


End file.
